George Karl coached a bona fide NBA star when Car- melo Anthony played for the Nuggets. They weren't always on the same page, as a one-game suspension of Anthony showed. How did they end up getting along? "It was just finally me letting him be him," Anthony said. Denver Post file

The answer came on one of the proudest days of George Karl’s career — his coach of the year news conference May 8. It came in reference to a shift in his coaching style once he returned to the Nuggets in the fall of 2010 from a successful second fight against cancer.

Given the events of Thursday, the innocuous quote takes on a different meaning altogether.

“Sometimes,” Karl said that day, “making changes is important.”

Nuggets president Josh Kroenke believes so. And with one big push, he swept the NBA coach of the year, the second-winningest coach in franchise history, out the door.

In truth, Karl seemed to know his long tenure with the team was coming to a close, though he had one year left on his contract.

“My desire has always been to finish out my career here,” he said that day. “I also know that 10 years is a long time in one place, and the (firing) posse is getting big.”

What a nine-year ride it was, filled with record-setting regular seasons followed by nearly annual playoff disappointments.

Karl did not return calls Thursday, but posted twice on Twitter, one that said the decision was “difficult to understand.”

He was a coach of the year (2013), an all-star coach (2010) and a winner of 423 games with the Nuggets, just 10 shy of Doug Moe’s franchise record. Karl had five 50-win seasons and won 62 percent of his games in Denver, starting with a whirlwind 32-8 finish to the 2004-05 season when he took over for Michael Cooper at midseason.

He coached in a throwback jersey and he clashed with players. He won big with Carmelo Anthony, and he won big without Melo.

Karl survived two bouts of cancer and years of anti-Karl chatter at www.firegeorgekarl.com. But, in his final go-round, when the Nuggets surpassed almost all expectations during the regular season, only to flame out against Golden State in the playoffs as a No. 3 seed, he seemed to lose that faction of fans who were his biggest backers.

But he always had a fan in Moe, the coach his fast-paced teams were constantly compared to.

“He’s done the best job of all,” Moe said. “The way he had to handle the team before this (the Anthony-led Nuggets) and since I was around, I know how difficult that was. That was almost impossible. Transforming, going from that team to this team and keeping with the level they are at — just a fabulous job. No one could have done the job that he has done.

“He’s stepped up and taken a lot of good players and made them into a great team. Just done the maximum that could possibly be done.”

The Nuggets had chances to let Karl go before as the playoff frustrations mounted. In 2009, Mark Warkentien, then the Nuggets’ vice president of basketball operations, shrugged away the critics. The vindication was a trip to the Western Conference finals, the Nuggets’ first trip that far in 25 years. They battled the Lakers even through four games before losing the series in six.

“While people were calling for the heads of George and our coaches, there was never a doubt that George was our coach and we stayed the course there,” Warkentien said at the time. “When you have a really good coach, you stay with him. It was never debated.”

Said Karl’s former all-star point guard in Seattle, Gary Payton: “I’ve got to rank him up there with the Phil Jacksons, the Larry Browns, the Pat Rileys, all them type of coaches.”

Those coaches, however, won NBA championships. In Denver, it was the wins Karl was not able to orchestrate that stung the most. As the first-round playoff losses mounted, so did the angst. Denver lost two times to teams that won the title and once to a team that reached the NBA Finals.

But when the Nuggets had the higher seed, they advanced out of the first round only once. They were 1-3 in years they had home-court advantage in the first round, including this year’s series loss to the sixth-seeded Warriors.

Getting the most talented players in lockstep always was a struggle, at least through the early years. Karl suspended Kenyon Martin during the 2006 playoff series against the Los Angeles Clippers. Karl never was on the same page with guard J.R. Smith. It took years before he and Anthony seemingly found a comfort level.

In 2009, a season during which Karl suspended Anthony for a game after his refusal to be subbed out, they seemed to work together best.

“It was just finally me letting him be him,” Anthony said that season. “He’s been the coach. I’ve been the player. This season me and George never had no beef or nothing, no going back and forth.”

That didn’t stop Anthony from bolting from Karl and the organization when his contract was up.

Karl talked often of karma, of the basketball gods. For whatever reason, the unseen forces never quite smiled on his teams in Denver when it mattered most.

The biggest missed opportunity of the Karl era came during the 2009-10 season, which perhaps was his best team. Because of his battle with neck and throat cancer, however, Karl could not finish out the season on the bench. Anthony was playing at an MVP level and Karl had the Nuggets in second place in the Western Conference when he had to step aside. Without Karl, the team fell apart down the stretch, dropping to fourth, and imploded in a first-round playoff loss to Utah.

Anthony was gone soon after, and Karl was rebuilding on the fly with new players.

WASHINGTON — Thirty games into the 82-game NHL season, and nearly six weeks after the Matt Duchene trade, Avalanche general manager Joe Sakic discussed the state of his team before Tuesday’s 5-2 loss at the Washington Capitals.